


When the First Frosts Arrive

by viennajones



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2709212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viennajones/pseuds/viennajones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There isn’t a place in the world where Elena feels like she belongs. There isn’t a person she belongs with either, not anymore, and in many ways that is the reason why she’s here, in a small town filled with superstitious people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the First Frosts Arrive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emjayelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjayelle/gifts).



> Dear Emjayelle, I was so glad to see you were my giftee this year because you are one of my favourite people in this fandom. I was also intimidated because I love your writing so much, but your prompts were all amazing and I decided to go for the rare pair since it is something we both enjoy very much. I hope you like this little fic! Happy Holidays <3
> 
> A massive thank you to the lovely mods of this fest, and to my wonderful friends and betas, N & N, for whipping my words into shape!
> 
> This fic references the legend of 'The Wild Hunt' which is fairly common in Northern Europe, but I took some liberties with it and bent it for my purpose.

There isn’t a place in the world where Elena feels like she belongs. There isn’t a person she belongs with either, not anymore, and in many ways that is the reason why she’s here, in a small town filled with superstitious people. Elena’s grandmother spent most of her life here and even though the memories of her are blurry and vague, Gran must have fitted right in, with her seemingly endless reserve of tales and legends.

When old Merlin starts spinning his yarns Elena slips out of the town’s only pub, where everyone seems to gather each single night. She doesn’t remember any of the stories Gran told her and they only make her feel like more of an outsider than she already is. Time to go home, or rather to the house that she inherited and currently lives in.

***

The only thing she hears is a quiet howling, almost like the wind, but very far away and strange, as if it isn’t the wind at all. Then a horn sounds, long and loud. Suddenly, the air is full of noise – the barking of wild hounds, the thunder of a hundred hooves hitting the ground, the rattling of chains, all joined in a cacophony with the wailing of desperate souls.

The horde is led by the tall figure of a man, seated upon a ghostly white stallion with deep red eyes, both horse and rider covered in gruesome wounds and scars. In his wake come giant wolf-like creatures, baying incessantly, fire burning beneath their paws, fangs bared and ready to tear apart their prey. Some are enchained and held by human figures, ragged men, women and even children, their eyes hollow and their skin pale.

***

_Upon those nights when Yule approaches, you should not stray outside. And if you must, my dearest child, keep to the middle of the path and hide your face from sight._

_Do not move, to not make a sound, keep your nose against the ground._

_Else the Hunt will drag you along, to follow the host on its terrible trail, your soul bound to its leader until his curse is undone._

_Do not cross them, do not call out; always keep to the middle of the road._

Now that it’s too late, Elena remembers her grandmother’s words. But a strange power has already latched onto something deep within her, and she feels that if she doesn’t give in, she might just be pulled apart at the seams. It seems much easier to let herself be swept up and taken away.

***

“Stay in the middle of the road!”

Elena doesn’t know if the voice is real or if it’s just someone she made up in parts of her mind that have already lost all sanity to the Hunt.

She fights it, tries to turn her face away, when something huge collides with her back and tears her down with it. Her head hits the ground, hard, and as her consciousness slips away, she hears that voice again, right there inside her ear.

***

Elena doesn’t know where she is. There is something wrong with her heart or her head or maybe both. She wants to open her eyes but every time she does, it feels like the world comes crashing in. She is hot sometimes and ice cold hands settle on her forehead, until she suddenly shudders and they pull away.

A voice sings to her from time to time, and the same cold fingers curl around her neck to help her drink, something that tastes disgusting, but makes her head hurt less and her heartbeat feel closer to normal. A wolf howls nearby and Elena wonders if it is a part of reality or if she is slipping back into a nightmare.

***

“You’re awake!”

Elena nods and stares at the large, white wolf that just stepped into the small room she found herself in when she came out of her delirious state a few hours ago. She’s a little too mesmerized by the bright fur, the piercing eyes, and the sheer size of the thing to pay much attention to the person speaking to her. She’s half expecting to be attacked and dragged away, thinking that the Hunt has found her after all, but the animal simply curls up in front of the fireplace and ignores her.

“Don’t mind him; he’s a little grumpy today. How are you feeling?”

Elena manages to look away long enough to realize that she’s talking to a woman so exquisitely beautiful that she doesn’t know what to say at first.

“You saved me,” are the words that finally make it out of her mouth, and she’s glad that she’s still far too weak to leave on her own.

***

Elena finds that Mithian is equal parts wonderful and mysterious. She’s lively and fun, and she doesn’t seem to mind that Elena still can’t walk further than the front door.

“Won’t anybody in town miss you?” she asks, when Elena apologizes for recuperating in her home.

“No.” It stings a little to admit that out loud, but Mithian smiles and hands her the cup of tea she’s been holding. Their fingers brush briefly, and Elena wonders at the lack of warmth on Mithian’s skin.

***

“Why were you out there that night, Elena?” Mithian asks over dinner. She hasn’t touched her soup yet, but Elena’s happily spooning it in, relishing the warmth that spreads through her body. The strange encounter from a few nights before still leaves her feeling chilled.

“I was on my way home. In most parts of the world, you don’t meet strange…well. I still don’t know exactly what that was.”

They haven’t spoken about that night. Elena still wakes up every evening from bad dreams and has trouble falling asleep when the wind howls.

“The Wild Hunt! You must have heard about it in town. And nobody knows what they are, exactly. There are different theories, of course. Some think they’re the dead, others claim they are fairies, some people believe they are evil spirits or lost souls cursed to hunt the skies forevermore. The only thing people mostly agree on is that they are bad news.”

“My Gran told me about it I think, but that was ages ago. I thought it was nothing but a story. I don’t believe in superstition…at least I didn’t before, but now I can hardly deny that some of it must be true now.”

Elena shrugs. It didn’t take her long to come to terms with this shift in her view on reality. She thinks that, at some point, she should probably bother old Merlin and ask him for a list of the creatures that everyone in town knows to be real.

“What are you, by the way?” She’s been meaning to ask, though it really is an awkward question.

“Oh. I thought you knew, but if you didn’t know about the Hunt…” Mithian hesitates.

“It’s alright if you don’t want to tell me. You don’t have to.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Elena reaches out and touches Mithian’s hand.

“You’re not very frightening, Mithian. You won’t scare me off, don’t worry.”

“I’m the Winter Witch. The people in town like to blame me when the winters get tough.”

“Well, are you to blame?” Elena asks, wrapping her fingers around Mithian’s.

There’s a glint in Mithian’s eyes that makes Elena grin.

***

Mithian wraps her up in warm clothing, most of it oddly mismatched, and makes her climb onto the wolf’s back.

“Ready?” Mithian asks. Elena doesn’t want to grab the fur but before she can panic about falling off, Mithian guides her arms around her waist and tells her to hold on.

Seconds later, they’re sprinting through powdery snow, the trees rushing by so fast it makes her giddy and a little disoriented. They jump over rocks and frozen streams and Elena tightens her hold, pressing up against Mithian’s back.

***

The lake isn’t frozen over completely and the ice is still too thin to carry the weight of either one of them.

“Such a shame,” Elena says. “I love ice skating.”

Mithian hasn’t done any magic in front of her before, but the twirling ice crystals she summons from seemingly everywhere all at once dance around in a wild and lovely way before they settle on the water, turning it into thick ice.

Later, after they’ve exhausted themselves, Mithian skating with grace, Elena falling and laughing and falling again, she finds out that Mithian’s lips warm up a little when they kiss.

***

Sharing a bed is tricky. Whoever decided that magical control over a season meant the witch needed to be an icicle herself clearly didn’t think things through. It works well enough if Elena pulls on layer upon layer of clothing when they actually intend to sleep, and it’s adorable how frustrated Mithian gets with all of it in the morning, when she wants to plant cool, tingling kisses between Elena’s thighs.

“At least in the summer I won’t need air conditioning,” Elena says when they finally get out of bed later. Mithian gives her a half-hearted grin.

“I thought that was funny,” Elena says.

***

Mithian leaves her sometimes, to go and take care of wintry business. Apparently there’s also a Wind Wizard in the area and he likes to mess with her snow clouds. Elena doesn’t mind, though. She feels comfortable in their little house in the middle of the woods and she loves taking walks in the fresh snow Mithian leaves behind when she goes.

These days she’s nursing a wounded owl Mithian brought home one day. Elena thinks about Gran’s house sometimes. She’d like to know if anyone in Avalon has realized that she hasn’t been there in weeks. Nobody misses things that don’t fit, though. They’re easily forgotten. Elena wonders if Mithian would miss her if she left.

“Where are you going today?” Elena asks cheerily, pushing those thoughts away.

“Making sure everyone has a white Christmas, darling,” she says and kisses her goodbye.

***

They don’t have a tree or presents, but it’s the best Christmas Elena has had in years. They have good food and a delicious punch that Mithian made; most importantly, they have each other. By the time they make it to bed, Elena is happily drunk and drowsy. She curls up next to Mithian and falls asleep.

Hours Later, Elena wakes up to the sound of a horn and the wind rattling against the shutters. Every part of her body is ice cold and there are wolfs howling in the skies. Elena starts shaking as the fear she’s been ignoring for week shoots back to the surface.

A hand reaches out and touches her arm, but it’s freezing cold and Elena bolts out of the bed, stumbling as she goes and falls to the ground.

“Ellie,” Mithian says and suddenly the lights turn on and Elena gets bundled up in about a hundred blankets. Mithian holds her, whispering soothingly to her until the Hunt has moved on and Elena has calmed down.

“I felt so cold,” Elena mumbles, shuddering at the thought.

“You forgot to put your extra clothes on last night,” Mithian says, pointing to the pile of warm knitwear. She looks guilty, though, and when they finally get back into bed, Elena thinks she’s trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.

***

On New Year’s Eve, they ride through the forest for hours until they finally reach higher ground where the trees grow further apart. From up here, they can see the fireworks of Camelot painting over the darkness in vivid colours and shapes.

“To a great new year,” she says and honestly believes that maybe, just maybe, it will be just that. A good year.

***

“What does a winter witch do during summer, anyway?”

There’s a long silence and Mithian continues staring at the pages of her book. Elena almost thinks that maybe she’s lost so deep within the story that she didn’t even hear the question. It’s a random question anyway, something that entered her mind and came out of her mouth in an instant. Now that she thinks about it, though, it’s something she does want an answer to.

“Mithian?”

The book shuts slowly, but Mithian doesn’t meet Elena’s eyes.

“I can’t do anything during summer. I don’t even know what summer is like, Ellie.”

Elena frowns, because this all makes very little sense to her.

“What do you mean by that, exactly?”

Mithian sighs and stands up, puts the book back in its place on the shelf, and wraps her arms around herself as if she is cold, which is ridiculous, because Mithian isn’t affected by the cold.

“There are rules to magic. Yes, I can control snow and ice and, to some extent, the weather. That’s a part of me as much as my heart is – I’m a creature of winter. To put it mildly, summer doesn’t agree with me. It makes me sickly and weak. So I fall asleep until it’s my time again.”

“So you just sleep a lot? That’s okay. Sleep is awesome. I never get enough of that anyway.”

Mithian looks at her with frustration and growing desperation.

“You don’t understand. It’s similar to hibernation, just during summer. I don’t get to just wake up whenever I want.”

Elena tries to wrap her head around it, this stupid rule that makes very little sense to her and which will take Mithian away from her. The thought makes her angry.

“So what you’re saying is that all this time it never crossed your mind to tell me I was signing up to fall in love with someone who’s going to be around what? Three or four months of the year?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not like I want to do this to you.”

“That’s just great, Mithian. Thanks ever so much.”

Elena knows she shouldn’t be lashing out, but she’s really fucking angry and her heart hurts terribly. Mithian absolutely should have told her about this, even though it probably wouldn’t have made a difference if Elena had known it from the start. She doesn’t think that it would’ve stopped her from loving Mithian, but at least she could’ve tried.

“I need some air,” she says, because she feels tears welling up in her eyes and the last thing she wants to do right now is break down and cry. Not in front of Mithian, so she leaves.

***

Elena watches as winter melts into spring. She wants to rip out every flower that dares to show its buds and to shoot every songbird that sings a happy tune.

“What if you tried to stay awake?”

“I did that, once. It’s no good, El. I get so sick that I have to stay in bed anyway. I had a fever that nearly killed me.”

Elena swallows and presses her face against Mithian’s neck.

“What if we moved to the north pole?”

Mithian runs her hands through Elena’s hair.

“It doesn’t work that way. And you’d freeze up there.”

***

Mithian lasts until early March before she gets so ill that Elena feels guilty for wanting to keep her around for another day, another week, another month.

She promises her that it’s alright to go to sleep, that she’ll be there when Mithian wakes up, that she loves her and that she’ll be alright without her.

“When will you wake up?” Elena asks before she leaves to settle back into her Gran’s house. She doesn’t want to stay back in the woods alone.

“Just before the first frosts arrive.”

***

It’s easier to live in Avalon, now that she knows where she belongs. She finds a job and she finds some friends, she starts listening to old Merlin’s tales and make a list of things one doesn’t do in and around town if one wishes to avoid mean spirits and angry trolls.

She tries to enjoy summer and fails. She develops a crush on Morgana until she realizes it’s only because she resembles Mithian.

She tries to be patient in the fall and fails. She bothers Lancelot at the weather station until he agrees to call her as soon as the first frost in the area is expected.

The day the call comes, she runs outside without getting her coat and finds a large, white wolf waiting in her garden, ready to carry her home.

 

 


End file.
